Through the lens of New Zealand fiction, Neoliberalism and Cultural Transition in New Zealand Literature, 1984-2008 examines how the reprise of market-based economics has impacted cultural life in a decolonizing nation. Reading novels by Alan Duff, Patricia Grace, Witi Ihimaera, Maurice Gee, Eleanor Catton and other politically-engaged writers, Lawn argues that the terms of neoliberal choice, competition and self-determination, have proven both culturally affirmative and socially corrosive, reconfiguring the potentialities of collective life in an era of rapid reform.